There's really not enough long term jobs in academia so people have to look elsewhere. Fortunately physics really sets you up for a lot of very different jobs.

There's really not enough long term jobs in academia so people have to look elsewhere. Fortunately physics really sets you up for a lot of very different jobs. I myself am one of the lucky ones, am working on a permanent position (similar to associate Prof) at a Uni in Sweden. I was thinking of jumping of academia and doing something else several times but somehow also a good opportunity just at the right moment. One thing that is often easy to forget is that there is so much more than the current hot topics that make the big media splashes (quantum computing, gravitational waves, graphene atm). I work in optics/photonics primarily in optical telecom. My work is much more engineering-like than many of the above topics. Anyway the further along in your career you come the more managerial work you do, same in academia as everywhere else I think.